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"Theoretically, I am ready to go to anything-once. If it moves, I'm interested; if it moves to music, I'm in love."

From 1973 until 1996 Arlene Croce was The New Yorker's dance critic, a post created for her. Her entertaining, forthright, passionate reviews and essays have revealed the logic and history of ballet, modern dance, and their postmodern variants to a generation of theatergoers. This volume contains her most significant and provocative pieces-over a fourth have never appeared in book form-writings that reverberate with consequence and controversy for the state of the art today.

Praise for Writing in the Dark, Dancing in The New Yorker

“[Croce] is without peer . . . Her criticism is distinguished by penetration and understanding of the subject, a large and novel scope of reverence, and a creative imagination . . . She loves the dance, and in her patient, close attention to it conveys this love to us. What she writes about the art will affect our thinking for a long time to come.” —Robert Craft, The New York Review of Books

“Croce is the Jane Austen of dance criticism . . . in breadth as well as in intensity the best dance critic around.” —Richard Poirier, The New York Times Book Review

Reviews from Goodreads

Arlene Croce

Arlene Croce was dance critic at The New Yorker for years. She is the author of several previous books, including Afterimages, The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, Going to the Dance, and Sight Lines. She lives in New York City.